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All the witnesses are dead. No notes were left. And the sophisticated town, at its political, social and commercial zenith, was destroyed by time and disease.

So when a mysterious clue — an iron axe remnant — was unearthed by archeologists at the 500-year-old Huron-Wendat “metropolis” northeast of Toronto, it dumbfounded the scientific sleuths working at what’s called
the Mantle site.

The axe was European. Wrought-iron was unknown here in the 1500s. Yet the tool was buried, deliberately, within the ancient palisades nearly a century before Europeans first made contact with the Huron-Wendat.

CSI:Stouffville
was born. So, too, was the riddle of why the axe was found so deep in the ground.

“I felt like I was in the middle of a genuine detective story,” says filmmaker Robin Bicknell, whose documentary,
Curse of the Axe
, traces centuries-old twists and turns that brings to life the bustling town that harboured the tool.

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“I don’t think people associate archeologists in the same way they might with a police team or a CSI team. But, in fact, it’s very similar. You have the scene of the ‘crime,’ you have clues, all kinds of evidence that has physical forensic stuff attached to it and a team of people trying to solve a mystery.”

It’s a puzzle that involved cutting-edge x-ray imaging in Toronto, tooth enamel analysis in South Africa, whaling huts in Labrador and an astonishing link to a long-dead Basque toolmaker and his distinct iron stamp.

With the aid of Toronto-based
archeologists Ron Williamson
and Andrea Carnevale, it’s deduced Basque fishermen left the axe in a whaling hut in the early 16th century when they returned home during winter. Iroquois of the St. Lawrence who travelled in the area may have picked it up as trading material. The piece was paddled deep into Ontario and eventually it was swapped into the Mantle site, where between 1,500 and 2,000 people lived — the largest known Huron-Wendat centre of its time.

Then the axe — the earliest piece of European iron discovered in the North American interior and bearing a unique Basque stamp — was buried. Deeply and purposefully, about 100 years before the Huron-Wendat ever met a white settler. Why?

“We believe in spirits — spirits in the water, the plants, the animals,” says Lainé, the charge d’affaires for Huron-Wendat Nation.

“Maybe at one point there was a kind of prophesy (or) maybe they couldn’t communicate with the axe or really understand it. Maybe somebody told them this will bring bad luck to your nation and they buried it, hoping they will be safe but, unfortunately, not.”

Within two decades of the Huron-Wendat’s first encounter with a European —
Étienne Brûlé around 1610
— a mighty nation of about 40,000 was decimated by killer diseases carried by settlers, such as small pox and influenza. About 10,000 Huron-Wendat survived. Some — while fleeing warring tribes — travelled to resettle in Quebec.

Bicknell says the documentary is named for the axe’s lethal symbolism.

“It’s called
Curse of the Axe
because of everything that little piece of iron represented in terms of being the crest of a tsunami (of death), the dark shadow that was about to be cast over people,” she says. “So it really was a curse.”

Lainé appears in the film. Bicknell says it was a profound moment when he first saw and held the axe shard.

“It was so moving the way Luc immediately connected with it when he touched it. It was chilling. He just knew.”

Bicknell says she was eager to write, direct and produce the documentary for Toronto-based yap films because so little film work focuses on North American history prior to European arrival.

“The pre-contact stories are never told. It’s always the story of when the ship shows up and then, what happens afterward. We’ve seen those stories.”

Telling the Huron-Wendat tale at Mantle wasn’t simple. They had no written history, only oral tradition. The 20,000 artifacts unearthed in 2003 at the site (named after the farmer who owned the field) have helped shape a better understanding of the sophisticated, complex society.

For instance, there were 98 long houses arranged around a plaza — a town square — where ceremonies and public gatherings were likely held. The village was fortified by three rows of palisades, which left post marks in the ground. It’s estimated 60,000 trees were cut down (with stone axes) over time to build the ramparts and the long houses.

As skilled farmers, the Huron-Wendat cultivated 80 square kilometres of cornfields, an area larger than downtown Toronto. The corn provided a food source year-round (ground corn flour was stored for consumption and trade). That tooth sent to South Africa? It revealed 62 per cent of the diet was corn-based.

Bicknell liberally uses dramatic re-enactments to flesh out her vision of pre-contact southern Ontario. She cast 35 First Nation people from reserves around London — all amateurs.

“None of them had ever acted and they were such troopers,” Bicknell says of the cold, rainy October weather last year when she shot the re-enactments.

“It was 2 degrees, I was in a parka and freezing. Our wardrobe people were so authentic that they wouldn’t let anyone wear underwear or anything. Our actors showed up at 7 in the morning and they were incredible; we had kids and mums who were pregnant and families and brothers. It was great.”

Lainé says he learned about his heritage from the documentary and hopes it helps educate Canadians and dispel stereotypes “that we are lazy people and like to take advantage of the taxpayer.”

“I hope this will show. . . we had a very sophisticated society and were well organized from a political and social point of view and (people) will see us with different eyes.”

As for the Mantle site? Most of it is now a subdivision.

Curse of the Axe airs Monday at 8 p.m. on History Television.

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